Swing Trading Journal by Point Hunter

I am going to start a journal here for the new year.. I am primarily a swing trader. I look to hold for 2-15 days and i try to make at least 5% per a trade.

I use tc2000 for stock selection review and IB as my broker. All orders are entered via buy/sell stop prior to market opening. I have a full time job, so i dont have time to watch the market too much during the day.

I first use a custom volatility filter to only look for stocks that have high volatility the past few months. I want to avoid boring stocks like msft, ibm, etc... so i look for stocks that have high atr and tend to have a history of making sizable moves. I am a discretionary pattern trader and I only trade horizontal like breaks, I will try to post charts for setups so you guys can get a feel of the setups i look for. I will try not too risk too much per a trade.. i am starting my account with $30k so i dont want to lose more than $200 or so per a trade.. at least for now.

For exits i will look to take atleast partial profits at 5% gain and losses will be cut no more than 5% under entry. I will use some flexibility and discretion with exiting but I think you get the idea.

I will also scale up size into winners or when the market is heavily in my favor. I am essentially trading momentum and continuation. I preffer the stock to be above the 200ma or 50ma for longs .. or below the 50ma or 200ma for shorts. Its all pretty simple, nothing to fancy or complicated. I quickly scroll through about 700-800 stocks every night in tc2000, to look for setup and it also helps me get a feel of the market and different sectors.

The common pattern i look for is a consolidation then breakout. I normally trade in the direction of the primary trend, but not always.. depending on how deeply overbought/oversold the broader market is. I need to be able to draw a horizontal line connecting a series of highs for a breakout and lows for a breakdown.

Nothing is exact, as I am not a systematic trader, but I think as I post my setups you will get a feel of what I am looking for.

I havent really backtested any of this... and I think this journal with real money will be the real test!

just curious, how much time does it take to go through your charts each night? I want to develop a swing tradng methodology to complement my day-trading. I have esignal and I find it quite tedious to go through charts manually.